The Peel Venue in Kingston, Pay2Play?

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GuitarPermalink Reply by Istvanski on February 12, 2012 at 14:08

Well I'm happy to hear that The Peel has changed their 'system'. One has to wonder whether a band would still be allowed to play on the night had they sold no tickets in advance.I recently saw a mate's gig at The Peel and the soundman was worth his weight in gold - the band were happy with him and that resulted in great audio reproduction for the audience.Contrast this with soundguys that many of us may have worked with (is; the one's who ain't got a Scooby with what they're doing - I remember a particular incident like this at The Rock Garden years ago which, incidentally had a ticket based pay to play system similar to the recent one at The Peel) and you then realize that the work of quality staff is honorable.However, it was The Peel's recent ticketing system that made us choose The Fighting Cocks as a venue instead. Horses for courses and other cliches...Perhaps with this new found understanding between venue and performers, we could organize the next Punk Rock Til You Drop gig at The Peel?

Peel said:

Hi Matt

well you'll be glad to know that this is no longer the case at The Peel. The venue has been making some huge changes over the last month or two in order to try and get things right.

We no longer run the old "sell tickets in advance" policy and have completely changed it for a newer system.

Obviously in very difficult financial times both venues and bands want to make some money at the shows, so we have changed it to the following.

Based on a door price of £7 (this price is obviously flexible as some bands prefer to do £6 or £5 depending)

Each band now gets:

Pull 100+, you get £5 per head

Pull between 50-99, you get £4.50 per head

Pull less than 50, you get £4 per head

Pull less than 30, you get £3.50 per head

(Take of 50p per head for £6 price and 75p for £5 price)

so if you pull 200 people at £7 your walking away with £1000, but if you only pull say 22 people your at least getting £77.

we think this is a bit fairer and no longer making you pay in advance to play.

In reply to your other post, yes we agree bands do spend a lot of time and money buying equipment, rehearsing etc, so therefore shouldn't have to keep on paying to play their music...but you must understand that some venues (not all by any means) have also spent a huge amount of money too on equipment etc to make the venue great for bands to play.

With the amount of bloody taxation and with rising costs on everything, just to open the doors to put a gig on costs us almost £400 a day and that's just the costs of bar staff,rent, rates, gas, electricity, VAT, tax, buying stock..the list goes on.

So basically if between 3 bands the total crowd is 30 people, that's a door take of £210, the bands get £105 of that, we get £105 of that...out of our £105 we then have to pay £70 to the sound engineer and £20 to the door person, leaving us with £15. If those 30 people then buy an average of 3 drinks each at £3.50, thats £315 over the bar......total day earnings for the venue £330....daily loss £70. And that's not even taking into account that being a venue on a main road with a parade of shops next door, some of the crowd are just simply buggering off to the off license and downing cans down the road between bands.

We are making the effort to improve things for the bands, the crowd and ourselves, so cut us a bit of slack and feel free to call us if you do want a gig.

Cheers

The Peel

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VenuePermalink Reply by Peel on February 13, 2012 at 11:28

Hi Istvanski

Thanks for the feedback, please by all means drop me an email at info@peelmuzik.com and we can have a chat.

We do have a deal for promoters that might interest you.

Cheers

Lee

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